Chapter 15: Still Waters

New Pittsburgh, Mars

November 22, 2135

It was 21:33 on the clock.

Nate lay on his back in his own bed, one arm stretched out across the sheets, staring up at the ceiling with the kind of loose, unfocused attention that came after a long, satisfying session of sexual activity in all its glory. Roxy was beside him, sprawled half across his torso, her leg hooked over his, her hair a mess against the pillow. The room smelled strongly of the last hour—heavy with mixed sexual musk—and both of them had admitted freely that they rather enjoyed that particular aroma. Enjoyed basking in it. It was the smell of getting laid.

And doing it in his actual bedroom was, in Nate’s estimation, a significant upgrade.

No dirt under his back. No pine needles sticking to places they had no business being. No sudden pauses because the proximity alarm chirped and someone might be coming up the path. They had a door, a bed, and sacred privacy. Tyler being out until midnight had turned what was usually a logistical exercise into something fully civilized and proper.

Roxy shifted slightly against him, letting out a quiet, satisfied sound that didn’t really need interpretation. “A good fuck,” she muttered.

“Yeah,” Nate said, not bothering to move.

For a while, they just lay there, letting the moment stretch. The low hum of the rezzie systems filled the background, steady and constant, the kind of noise you didn’t notice until everything else went quiet. Nate’s mind drifted without direction, bouncing from one thought to the next until it eventually circled back to the only unusual variable in the evening.

Tyler. He was the reason they were able to have the rezzie to themselves. He had eaten, stood up, and announced he was heading out. No details, no explanation, just that he’d be back around midnight. Nobody had asked questions. That wasn’t how things worked in greenie circles. You went where you went, did what you did, and as long as it didn’t blow back on anyone else, it was your business.

Still, Nate found himself filling in the blank. He and Deal were probably meeting somewhere to do ... well ... whatever homos did to get each other off.

The thought landed and, instead of passing through, stuck. Nate blinked once, staring up at the ceiling. He realized, with a faint sense of surprise, that he had absolutely no idea what homos actually did with each other. How did it work?

He couldn’t come up with anything. Not in any practical sense. Not even a vague outline. People threw around phrases like ‘cocksucker’ and ‘assfuck’ routinely, but he did not associate those terms with actual sex acts, hetero or homo. They were just common vulgarities. So what did they do? When it came to his own experience, there was nothing mysterious about it. There was an innie and an outie. The outie went into the innie. Even morons could figure it out. But two outies? It didn’t add up. Yet it existed, so there had to be a way to make the equation work.

He couldn’t ask. That would be weird on multiple levels.

He couldn’t look it up either. There was no stream, no guide, no late-night curiosity rabbit hole to go down. That entire category simply didn’t exist in any accessible way. It wasn’t forbidden so much as ... absent.

He turned his head slightly toward Roxy.

“You ever think about Tyler and Deal?” he asked.

Roxy cracked one eye open, not moving otherwise. “What about ‘em?”

Nate made a small, lazy gesture with his hand. “Like ... what the fuck do they actually do?”

That got her attention. She lifted her head just enough to look at him properly, her expression shifting from relaxed to thoughtful.

“ ... Holy shit,” she said.

“Right?” Nate pushed himself up onto his elbows a little. “I just realized—I have no idea. None.”

Roxy rolled onto her side to face him, propping herself up. “Me neither,” she admitted. “Not even a guess.”

They looked at each other for a moment, both of them turning the idea over, as if one of them might suddenly produce an answer out of nowhere.

“That’s wild,” she said finally.

“It is,” Nate agreed. “It’s like there’s a whole other version of the same thing we do and we don’t even know how it works.”

“Or if it even works the same,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Roxy’s brow furrowed slightly. “You think they just ... figured it out?”

Nate let out a short breath that might have been a laugh. “I mean, that’s how we learned to do it. So probably.”

“Trial and error,” she said.

“Has to be.”

She considered that for another second, then shook her head and let herself drop back onto the mattress.

“Man,” she said, a faint grin pulling at her mouth, “I’m glad that’s not our problem.”

“Same,” Nate said, easing back down beside her.

The question lost its weight as quickly as it had gained it. It didn’t matter, not really. Whatever Tyler and Deal were doing out there in the city, it had nothing to do with them, and it didn’t change anything about the way their own world worked.

Roxy shifted closer, settling back into him, already done thinking about it. Nate let his gaze drift back up to the ceiling, the earlier curiosity fading into the same loose, satisfied quiet that had filled the room before.

“Did you really like it when I put my mouth on you?” she asked slyly. “That northern docking mission of yours?”

“It was incredible,” Nate said, using a bit of acting. Yes, it had felt good but it had been quite short lived. Not even really a suck. Just a kiss. Like the kind of kiss a grandmother gives a grandchild. Short. A peck. Certainly nothing to get excited about. But she had done it. Baby steps were the name of the game on Mars.

“How’s the action with you and Lissa?” Roxy asked. “You two had a lot of time off together. Did you make any fuckin’ pathways inward, if you know what the fuck I’m saying.”

He knew what she was saying.

The Martian dust storm had gone on longer than first forecast. It had not only caused construction shutdowns on Wednesday and Thursday, but Friday and the following Monday as well. Today—Tuesday—was the first day the conditions had been “calm enough” to resume work. That was $1184 that he would not be paid on the first of December. And it had been four days that he and Lissa had both been off work while everyone else in the circle was on the clock.

“It didn’t happen,” he replied. “We got together every one of our days off and on Saturday too, but no inroads were made.”

“She didn’t fuck you?” Roxy asked. “In four days alone with you? What the fuck, greenie?”

“We kissed a lot,” Nate said. “And I mean a lot. She’s really into kissing. Drags me off into some dark part of the park and puts her tongue in my mouth whenever the fuckin’ mood strikes her, but that’s as far as she’ll go. Wouldn’t even let me touch her tits. Pushed my hand away when I tried.”

“Why didn’t you bring her here?” Roxy asked. “Or go to her place? So you could be alone. Do I need to write you a fuckin’ instruction manual, Nate-dawg?”

“I tried,” Nate said. “Invited her over to make lunch for her on Thursday and Friday both. She wouldn’t do it.”

“Why the fuck not?” Roxy asked.

“She says it wouldn’t be proper,” Nate said. “That if we got caught, we’d have a reputation.”

“Did you tell her we ain’t on fuckin’ Earth anymore and nobody cares what the fuck you do?”

“Not in so many words,” Nate said, “but I introduced the concept. She ain’t buying it.”

“So she kisses you and rubs her body on you and gets both of you all hot and bothered and shit, but doesn’t want to fuck?”

“I’m sure she wants to fuck,” Nate said. “She just won’t let herself. She’s Earth-fucked, remember? You don’t get over that shit overnight.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Roxy said, as if it were she who was missing out on sex instead of Nate. “Keep working it. If you’re kissing her like you kiss me, she’ll give in. She’ll have to.”

“Maybe she’d like one of my special kisses too,” Nate suggested.

Roxy chuckled naughtily. She had experienced one of Nate’s special kisses a little earlier. A special kiss that had gone on for more than thirty minutes and had pulled three big pleasures from her, each more powerful than the last. “You get your mouth within two inches of her twat and she’s yours for life, Nate-dawg. You have a magic fuckin’ mouth.”

“I think it’s more the tongue, actually,” Nate said.

“The tongue is in the fuckin’ mouth,” she reminded.

“I suppose,” he said with a shrug. “And I’m not looking for someone who wants to be with me for life. Not yet.”

“Then keep your fuckin’ tongue away from her twat,” Roxy advised.

“I’m not sure I can promise that,” Nate said.

Life, such as it was on Mars in what would later be called the Agricultural Rush period of its history, had a way of settling into patterns that did not announce themselves as patterns until you were already deep inside them.

The December 1st payday arrived.

For the first time in his employed life, Nate’s deductions exceeded his earnings. Instead of a number with a small plus sign and black digits, there was a minus sign followed by three red ones. The first of those digits was a seven.

It took him a moment to process that.

Of course, the tax authorities—federal and planetary—had taken their share. Rent had been deducted. The clinker fee had come out as it always did, along with the scheduled repayment on the Green Horizon advance. None of that was new. None of that was surprising.

What was new was what happened after all of that.

The no-burn loan payment had not been fully covered. And so, per the agreement he had accepted without much thought (or choice) at the time, the system had already stepped in and handled the shortfall. It had extended him additional credit to close the gap, applied the associated penalty fee, and withdrawn the first payment on that new amount before he ever saw the numbers.

When it was finished, his bank account settled at exactly zero. Not a dollar left to his name until the next payday. He stared at the figure for a while, as if it might change if he gave it enough attention. It didn’t.

There wasn’t much choice after that. There never was, not really. He authorized another no-burn—twenty thousand this time—and rolled it together with the existing balances into one larger obligation. Cleaner that way. Easier to track. That was how the system presented it. One number instead of several. One problem instead of many.

It was a depressing situation.

And by the next payday, it became more depressing.

He cut where he could. There wasn’t much to cut. He was already operating close to the floor. No extras, no indulgences that cost real money. Food, shelter, the basic cost of continuing to exist in a place that required constant payment just to remain in it.

It wasn’t enough.

The numbers didn’t move in the right direction. Not quite. Each cycle left him a little further behind than the last, the difference small enough to ignore in isolation but impossible to miss when you stepped back and looked at the trend.

By the first of the year, he was approaching fifty thousand dollars in debt.

Fortunately for Nate, unlike many of his fellow greenies who found themselves stuck in similar—and often worse—situations, he had something to keep his mind off the numbers. Something free. Something that required no purchase, no subscription, no approval, and no permission beyond the willingness of another person.

He had sex.

Full-on, stinky, mutually pleasurable sex with Roxy whenever they could find the time and a place to do it. No mystery there. No hesitation. No rules beyond not getting caught. It was simple, direct, and did exactly what it was supposed to do every time.

With Lissa, it was a completely different animal.

What they had was hot and heavy, but it stopped at kissing. And she absolutely loved kissing. Any time they could find even a few seconds alone and out of sight, she was on him—pulling him into it like she’d been thinking about it all day. And she had gotten good at it. Not just good—creative. She’d try things, change angles, push into it with real intent. It wasn’t tentative anymore. She was in it.

But that was as far as it went.

She still wouldn’t come to his rezzie when no one else would be there. And while she had shivered in straight-up glorious lust the one night he let his lips drift down and kiss her neck, any attempt to move things further killed the act immediately. A hand on her chest, or even sliding too far up her leg, and she was done. She’d push his hand away and pull back, breathing hard, eyes still lit up with everything she was trying not to act on.

She’d broken away more than once when it was completely obvious she was desperate to experience more. Lust in the eyes. Flushed skin. Nipples showing through her shirt. Pupils blown wide. All the signs were there.

But she just wouldn’t let it happen.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want it. That part was obvious. The problem was that whatever had been wired into her back on Earth was still holding the line. The Earth-fucking. She’d managed to carve out a mental exception for kissing—and once she did, she leaned into it hard—but anything past that was still off-limits.

Touching tits? No.

Hands on thighs? Not happening.

That line held every time.

Until, one day, it didn’t.

It was on a Saturday afternoon in mid-December. Winterfest decorations had started to appear along the streets—strings of lights draped across walkways, synthetic wreaths mounted on building entrances, and artificial pine trees arranged in neat, symmetrical rows that tried their best to imitate something they had never actually been. There was no breath fogging in the air, no cold biting at exposed skin. There were no burn barrels on the corners, no clusters of people warming their hands over open flames the way Nate remembered from Roseville. Open flames weren’t something you set up casually inside a pressurized Martian city—especially not flames that pumped out greasy black smoke with nowhere to go. And even if you were crazy enough to try it, there wasn’t exactly a surplus of free lumber lying around.

Winterfest felt fake anyway because there was no winter here.

Outside the city, in the northern latitude wastelands, the temperature never climbed above zero degrees and could plunge as low as minus one hundred and twenty. Inside New Pittsburgh, by contrast, it was always twenty-two degrees. No wind. No wind chill. No variation. A stable, controlled environment that made seasons more of an idea than a lived experience. People with green blood in their veins dressed accordingly—shorts, light shirts, whatever felt comfortable in a place where the weather was pleasant and never varied in any way.